Necessity and Freedom

Lecture IV:The Roman World and the Teutonic Tribes

Schmidt Number: S-3189

On-line since: 30th April, 2014

(aka: Angels, Man and Animals in the Light of
Spiritual Freedom)

February 1, 1916

We
are far too accustomed to dealing with big problems like
necessity and freedom in the simplest possible concepts and
trying, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye to cover as many
aspects as we can. We usually do not consider that problems of
this kind require that we realize how complicated many of the
interrelationships are in the world, and that what takes place
in one area must be looked at in an entirely different light,
if we want to understand it, than something quite similar in
another area of the world.

I
would like first of all to remind you of something I mentioned
here a short time ago in a different connection. When we
see such significant world events as those of the present, we
are very much inclined to look hastily for the most obvious
causes and to expect to find the consequences in what will
happen immediately afterward. With this kind of observation we
do the facts a thorough injustice. When I mentioned this
before, I drew your attention to the fact that at the beginning
of the Middle Ages the Roman world and what is now Central
Europe were in opposition to one another. From a historical
point of view we can say lightly, “Well, we try to
discover the particular political motives of ancient Rome that
made those Romans feel compelled to carry out their campaigns
against the countries to their north, against what is now
Central Europe. And we can look for the consequences in
subsequent developments.”

Yet
if we look at things this way we do not by any means exhaust
all the points that should be considered. For just imagine, if
something different had happened in the way the tribes moved
across Europe from east to west, or something had happened
differently in the clash between the might of Rome and the
Teutonic tribes, the whole subsequent development of Central
Europe right up to modern times would have had a different
appearance. All the various events we have seen taking place in
the course of the centuries up to our time would have been
different if, at that time, the world of the ancient Roman
people, who owing to their particular quality and their
position in world history could not fully take up Christianity,
had not fused with the world of historically young peoples who
had taken up Christianity with youthful energy.

Out
of the way this encounter came about between a culturally
overly mature people, such as the Romans were, and a
historically young people, such as the Teutonic people
were in those days, all the later events have developed right
up to Goethe's Faust and all that nineteenth century
culture has produced. Could things have happened the way they
did if that encounter had not occurred? Here, we are looking at
a stream permeated with a strict inner necessity moving
through world events and spreading out over immense regions.
How could anyone at that time possibly have even wanted to
arrange his actions in keeping with what has happened on
the physical plane through the centuries from then until
now?

What is taking place today is in turn the starting point of
universal configurations that will of course be connected
with current happenings; yet, as far as events on the physical
plane are concerned, these configurations will on the
face of it look very dissimilar to what takes place compressed
into a short time span. I only want to mention this so that you
become aware that there are deep reasons behind what I already
mentioned in connection with these studies, namely, that
we do not get far by brooding and speculating about how things
are connected in the world. Imagine a Roman or a Teuton
of the third or fourth century speculating on the
possible consequences of the battles taking place in that time,
and how far he would have got. Not very far!

It
is essential that we become aware that the deciding factors
concerning things that have to happen and our recognition that
they really ought to happen are not our speculations about
their possible results or immediate consequences but other
things. It is essential that we become aware that into the
stream of events taking place on the physical plane there
actually enter forces we sense as coming from the spiritual
world, impulses about the particular effects of which we don't
need to speculate in regard to what ought to happen on the
physical plane. We must be in no doubt that looking at human
action and world history shows clearly how necessary it
is that we should extend our view beyond what lies on the
physical plane. And after having prepared the way for these
essentials, let us return to considering the human being as
such.

In
the last lecture I showed how impossible it is to acquire a
right relationship to our past actions if we merely continue
mulling them over. On the contrary, we must realize that what
is past, including our own actions, belongs to the realm of
necessity, and we must become familiar with the thought that
what happened had to happen. That is to say, we acquire a right
relationship to our actions if we can look objectively at
our past achievements, looking at a successful or
unsuccessful deed of ours with equal objectivity.

Now
you are bound to have serious objections to what I have just
said, for such objections do exist. Consider for a moment
what I have just said, that when we have done something, it is
over; that we establish a proper attitude to it by facing it
objectively and not wishing we had acted differently. The
serious objection is this: What about the whole domain that
should play a great part in human life, the domain of
repentance for a deed we have done? Obviously people are
quite right in saying that repentance is necessary and has to
take place. If we could manage to remove from the human soul
the feeling of regret, we would be removing a moral impulse of
the highest order. But are we not actually doing away
with it when we simply look at all that has happened completely
objectively?

Here indeed is a new difficulty, one that can be the starting
point for endless misunderstandings. We will have to go to the
heart of the question of freedom if we want to clear away this
difficulty. You know, the great Spinoza said that when we look
at the world, we can really only speak of necessity.
[
Baruch Spinoza, 1632–1677, Dutch pantheist philosopher.
The example of a stone being pushed into motion can be found
in his sixty-second letter of 1674.
]
Freedom is fundamentally a kind of illusion. For if a ball is
hit by another one, it has to go the way the second one goes.
“If it had consciousness it would believe” —
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
— “that it was going its way
by choice. And it is the same with the human being,” says
Spinoza.
[
Rudolf Steiner,
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
(Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1986).
]
“Even though he is in the clutches of
necessity, just because he is conscious of what he does, he
thinks he is free.”

But
Spinoza is utterly and totally wrong. The matter is quite
different. If we really flew off somewhere like the ball that
follows only the necessity of propulsion, we would lose
consciousness regarding everything to do with our flying and
our acting out of necessity. We would be bound to be
unconscious of it. Consciousness would be eliminated. And that
is what happens. Just think of the speed with which you are
moving through space according to the science of astronomy! You
most certainly do not do that consciously. There,
consciousness is cut out. You would not be capable of
being conscious, for you would not be able to hurtle
through space as the science of astronomy shows you do.
Consciousness of everything a person does out of
necessity has to be eliminated, and in such an obvious case as
flying through space we can readily see that processes subject
to necessity eliminate our consciousness.

However, we are not always so obviously conscious of things,
but more or less unconscious of them. In real life it is very
difficult to distinguish one from the other. Where one thing
borders on another we cannot understand them as easily as
in our case above. On the contrary, we could say,
“In all matters where we are absolutely conscious,
our actions cannot be other than free. If a ball that I struck
really had consciousness, it would only fly in a certain
direction if it received into its consciousness the
impulse I gave it and directed its own course accordingly. The
ball would first of all have to become unconscious in order
merely to follow the momentum.”

If
you think this over, you will make a distinction that we
unfortunately do not make in ordinary life with regard to
actions. The fact that we do not make this distinction
has not only a theoretical significance but also a very
practical one. We do not in fact distinguish between
situations where we have been unsuccessful and cases that are
immoral and bad. This distinction is an extraordinarily
important one. It is absolutely true that we arrive at a
correct estimate of an action that has not succeeded and has
not turned out as we intended only if we can look at it
objectively as though it had been absolutely necessary. For as
soon as it is over it is in the realm of absolute necessity. If
something does not work out and we feel uncomfortable later on
because it has not worked out, it is absolutely true that our
uneasiness arises from egotism. One would have liked to have
been a better person, a more capable person. That is egotism
expressing itself. And unless this egotism is completely rooted
out, we cannot see the further development of our soul in as
significant a light as we should.

But
not every deed we have done is an unsuccessful one; there can
also be a bad deed, a morally bad deed. Let us look at morally
bad deeds, for instance, the following one, to choose a
really striking example. Suppose someone has nothing to
eat, or would like something for some other reason than
hunger, and he steals. Stealing is a bad deed, isn't it? Does
what we have said keep a person who has stolen something from
feeling remorse for his deed? No, it does not! And why not? For
the very simple reason that he did not seriously want to steal,
but only wanted to possess what he stole. He could readily have
cut out the stealing if you had given him what he wanted, or if
he had been able to acquire it in some other way than by
stealing.

This is a striking case, but in a certain way it applies to all
forms of bad deeds. The bad deed as such is never really
intended, and language has a subtle feeling for this. When an
evil deed has been done, we say, “conscience
stirs.” Why does conscience stir? Because the bad deed
only now becomes a matter of knowledge. It comes up into
consciousness. When the deed happened, the awareness was
taken up by the motive on account of which the bad deed was
done. A bad deed is not willed. And repenting means that the
perpetrator becomes aware that he allowed his consciousness to
be dulled at the time the bad deed was done. Whenever anyone
does a bad deed, it is always a matter of his consciousness of
the deed being dulled, and of his having to acquire an
awareness of cases like the one in which his consciousness was
dimmed. The whole point of punishment is to awaken forces in
the soul that will enable consciousness to extend to the kind
of situations that previously produced an elimination of
consciousness.

Among the dissertations done at universities by
philosophers who are also occupied with legal problems
there is usually one on “the right to administer
punishment.” Now a great many theories have been
drawn up concerning reasons for giving punishment. The one and
only possible reason can be found only when we realize that
punishment is given for the sake of exerting the soul forces so
that consciousness will extend into spheres it did not
previously reach. This is also the task of repentance. Its
purpose is precisely to let us observe the deed in such a way
that the force of the repentance raises the action into
consciousness. Then the consciousness will see the whole
picture and will not be dulled the next time. You see what is
involved. We must learn to discriminate properly between a
fully conscious deed and one where the consciousness is
dimmed.

On
the other hand, if you have an action that does not fit the
category of good or bad but was only unfortunate, an
action in which something we had intended to do was not
successful, there the point is that we ourselves can
obscure our view of it if we judge it by bringing in the
thought, the feeling, that it would perhaps have turned out
differently if we had done this or that better, or if we
ourselves had been different. Here, it is a matter of bearing
in mind that if the eye is to see an object, it cannot see
itself. It must hold up a mirror, for the moment the eye holds
up a mirror to see itself, it cannot see the object. The moment
a person broods about how differently he should have acted, the
deed cannot act upon him with the kind of power that will
further his soul development. For as soon as you set egotism
between yourself and your deed, as implied in the fact that you
would really like to have done the deed differently, you are
doing exactly the same as when you hold a mirror in front of
your eye so that it cannot see the object.

We
can also put it another way. You know there are so-called
astigmatic eyes, eyes in which the cornea are curved in
different degrees in the perpendicular and the horizontal
direction. Eyes like that have a peculiar kind of inaccurate
vision. Such persons see specters merely because the cornea has
an irregular curve. They see specters because they are actually
perceiving their own eyes and not what is outside. If one
perceives one's own eye because it is incorrectly constructed
and has not become an eye that can completely eliminate itself
and allow the object to affect it, one cannot perceive the
object. If we fill our mind with the thought “You should
have been different, and if you had only done this or that
differently, it would all have turned out well,” it is
just as though we had astigmatism and did not see the actual
fact but distorted it. Yet a person must see the real facts
allotted him, only then will they really be effective.
Their effect on a person who is not filled with feeling about
facts but allows the facts themselves to work upon him will be
the same as the effect an outside object has on healthy eyes.
The facts then continue their work in the soul.

One
can say that anyone who has not yet acquired an objective view
of past facts in which he was involved cannot see them in their
objectivity and therefore cannot obtain from them what he
ought to have for his soul. It is exactly as though our eyes
were to remain at their stage of development in the sixth or
seventh month of embryonic growth, while we ourselves were born
at the proper time. We would see the whole world wrongly. If
the eyes were not to continue developing during the sixth,
seventh, eighth, and ninth month, but were to stop short, they
would not eliminate themselves in the process of seeing. We
would see something entirely different from what we
actually see when we develop normally.

Thus what we have done acquires its right value only when we
have come to the point of being able to let it enter the stream
of necessity, and when we can regard it as necessity. But as
has been said, we must realize that we then have to make the
distinction between what is successful and unsuccessful and
what is called “good” or “bad” in a
moral sense.

Broadly speaking, you will find all this analyzed, though more
philosophically, in my
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
for there it is emphasized that human beings
become free when they achieve the possibility of drawing
impulses from the spiritual world. In one passage it is
even expressly stated that impulses of free will come from the
spiritual world. However, that does not exclude the utmost
freedom in relation to certain events in which we very
distinctly follow necessity. For we must distinguish between
purely external physical necessity and spiritual
necessity, although the two are basically pretty much the
same. But they differ in regard to the position they occupy in
world existence.

It
is like this: Let us look again at a figure such as Goethe, who
has appeared in world history and of whom one can say that we
can follow up the education of a person such as he, and can see
how he became what he was; we can then follow up the impulse
that led him to achieve his Faust and his other poetical
works. We can, as it were, regard all that Goethe achieved as
if it were the result of his education. And then of course we
see him as a genius. We certainly can. By doing this we remain
focused on Goethe.

But
we can do it another way. We can follow the spiritual
development in the eighteenth century. We can pick out some
details, for instance, that before Goethe had thought of
writing a Faust, Lessing had projected one, so
there was already one in existence.
[
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 1729–1781,
German poet, playwright, and critic.
]
Thus we can say that the
conception of Faust arose out of the spiritual problems
and impulses of the time. We could say that if we examine
Lessing's projected Faust and a number of other similar
Faust versions, they all led to the famous Faust.
By leaving Goethe out, we still come to Faust as though
by necessity. Faust arose out of what preceded it. So we
can arrive at Faust by following Goethe's development.
One can look at Goethe from a more developmental point of view,
or one can entirely leave him out and look in detail at how a
type of poetry originated in Europe, such as the
Song of the Nibelungs,
[Nibelungenlied,
a Middle High German epic of about 1200, telling of the
life of Siegfried, his marriage to Kriemhild, his wooing
of Brunhild on behalf of Gunther, his murder by Hägen,
and the revenge of Kriemhild.
]
and how it became compressed into the poem Parsifal:
[
Parsifal, a hero of mythology and various epics and romances,
especially the one by Wolfram von Eschenbach.
]
Parsifal, the striving human being, belonging to a certain period
of evolution. One can look at how another line of development then
came about, due to which the Parsifal concept was quite
forgotten, and how that remarkable idea took hold of
people that found its expression in the popular romance
of Faust. This brought the appearance of a Faust about,
what one might call a Parsifal of a later age. Goethe can
be left out entirely.

Obviously we must not be pedantic; fifty years more or less do
not matter. Time is elastic and can be stretched forward or
backward, so that that does not interfere. It is only with
things that go on in an ahrimanic way that time plays an
important part. Things that come from the gods can always be
moved forward or backward in time. But speaking generally we
can say that even if the Frankfurt councilor Kaspar Goethe and
his wife Aja had not had their son Wolfgang, or if he had died
immediately after birth, for as you know he was ill at birth
and nearly died, someone else would certainly have produced
something similar to Faust. Similarly if Goethe had
lived in the fourteenth century, he would certainly not have
written Faust. These are unreal thoughts of course, but
sometimes one has to consider them in order to realize the
truth.

Thus we can now ask the question, “Did Goethe
produce his Faust or any of his life's work out of
freedom, or was it a question of absolute necessity?” The
greatest freedom of all is to obey historical necessity! For if
anyone imagines that his freedom could ever be
endangered by what exists in the world as necessity, he
ought also to say, “I want to create a poem, but I am a
person who wants to work in total freedom! I want to disregard
all the other poets who were unfree; I want to write a free
poem. But I could not be free if I were to use the words of our
language, for they came about through primeval necessity. That
would not do! I will be an absolute champion of freedom.
I will make up my own language!” And he sets about
doing so. What he would actually achieve, of course, would be
that everybody rejects him and his poem written in a
nonexistent language, that with his freedom he would be
bound to arouse everyone's resistance, which would express
itself at first of course merely in incomprehension. From
this you will see that there can be no talk of freedom, as it
enters into the stream of events, being in any way encroached
upon by the necessity present in the ongoing stream of
world events.

We
might also imagine a painter who wanted to be completely free
saying, “I want to paint for sure, but I do not want to
paint on a canvas or any other surface; I will paint freely. Do
I first of all experiment on a given material? Not me! For then
I would perpetually be compelled to comply with its
surface.” The material has a very definite conformity to
law, yet complying with it does not mean one is not free.

Particularly where major events in world history are concerned,
it is obvious that when consciousness plays a part in our
actions, what we can call necessity can join directly with
freedom. As I have already said, in the fourteenth century
Goethe would not have been able to create Faust, for it
would have been absolutely impossible for Faust to
have come about at that time. He would not have been able to
write it. Why not? Because there is something we have to call
an empty space in world events with regard to certain
evolutionary impulses. Just as we cannot put more water
into a cask if it is already full, or we can only put a certain
quantity into it if it is already partly full, we cannot put
anything we please into an already “full” age.

In
the fourteenth century there was no space for anything
like the kind of thing that came down from the spiritual world
through a human being into the physical world in the form of
Faust; no space, only a state of fullness. Events run
their course in cycles, and when a cycle has been completed, an
empty space appears for new impulses which can then enter the
life of the world. A cycle has to be complete in regard to
content, and then an empty space must occur again, before new
impulses can come in. In the cultural period in which
Goethe lived, an empty space had occurred for the
impulses that came from the spiritual world to the
physical world through him. Evolution really does proceed in
waves: emptiness — a state of fullness to the point of
completion — an ebbing — emptiness again. Then
something new can come.

In
the time between death and a new birth a human being plans his
next incarnation according to this rhythm. He arranges it so
that he encounters the particular level of emptiness or
fullness in the physical world that is right for his impulses.
Someone bringing with him from earlier incarnations impulses of
the highest order that require a space must come at a
time when there is an empty space. Whoever has the kind of
impulses that need to meet with receptivity must
incarnate at a time when there is a space to be filled. In many
areas of course one thing will work in opposition to another.
That is quite obvious. We see then that in a certain respect we
choose — if we may use the word — on the strength
of our inner qualities the period in which we come into the
world. And on this depends the inner necessity governing our
activities.

If
you bear this in mind, you will no longer see any contradiction
in the consecutive events and realize that Parsifal and so on,
and Faust, take their turns, and then comes Goethe who creates
a work that can just as well be understood in the succession of
periods. You will find no contradiction any longer, because
Goethe looked down from above and prepared in his inner
being what could become tangible in his work. That is to
say, when he was on the physical plane, he brought forth from
his inner being what he had absorbed in those particular
preceding centuries in which the stream of events had taken
place.

Between the two statements “Goethe's work had to be
produced at a definite time,” and “Goethe produced
it out of freedom” there is just as little contradiction
as there would be if I were to have a board and six balls in a
row, then produce a small cup and say, “I will put the
first ball into the cup, then the second and third and so on,
and I pour them out over here.” And if now someone
were to say, “But those balls lying over there are the
same balls we had to start with,” someone else could
reply, “No, they are the balls that came out of the
cup.” Both statements can be true.

What took place in the course of time and ultimately led to
Faust is what Goethe had absorbed in his inner being and
what Goethe then expressed just because it had accumulated
within him through looking down from the spiritual world. For
we always take part in the whole evolution of the world. If we
look at things this way, we can say “The moment we look
into the past we have to regard past events themselves as a
necessity. And if we look at ourselves and produce the past
again as deeds of the present, so long as we do this
consciously, we are still free in what we bring into the
present of what was prepared in the past out of
necessity.” Thus that person is most free of all
who knows in full consciousness “what I am doing is
nothing but spiritual necessity.” These things cannot be
understood by pedantic logic but only by fully grasping reality
in a living way.

There is still another approach that can help us
understand this completely. We can ask ourselves the
following. If we look at animals, we know they have a
dimmed consciousness. I have often described that. Human
beings have a level of consciousness in which freedom can
come to expression. But what kind of consciousness do
angels have, the beings immediately above human beings? What is
the consciousness of the angels like?

It
is actually very difficult to have an immediate
perception of the consciousness of angels. When we as
human beings want to do something, we consider what form our
action is going to take. And if it does not work out on the
physical plane as we imagined it should, we have failed. If
someone sews two pieces of cloth together, and when he
has finished it they come apart, the endeavor has not been a
success. This can happen with a sewing machine. If things do
not turn out as we had envisioned they would on the physical
plane, we say the deed has miscarried. That is to say, people
aim their will at something they picture happening on the
physical plane. This is how our human willing
proceeds.

But
not in the case of angels. Their intention is everything.
An angel's intention can be carried out in many different ways
and the effect can still be exactly the same. This is quite
true, though it is of course contrary to ordinary logic. In the
artistic sphere only, and then only from the human point of
view, can we acquire any feeling for this kind of
consciousness. For you will always find that if the
artist can take things in a human way — he may not always
be in a position to do so, but if he can — he may
possibly appreciate what turns out contrary to his
expectations, even to the point of failure, and regard it to be
of greater value than those things he did exactly as they
should have been done. We then come a little closer to what is
so extraordinarily difficult to grasp: that with the angels'
consciousness, their will, everything depends on the
intentions, and that these intentions may be realized in the
most varied ways on the physical plane, even in polar opposite
ways. That is to say, when an angel decides to do something, he
chooses something quite definite, but not in the way that he
says, “It has to look like this.” That is not in
the least implied. He will not know what it looks like until it
has happened.

We
have seen, and I have drawn your attention to the fact, that
this is even the case with the Elohim. The Elohim created light
and saw that it was good. This means that what comes first for
human beings, the mental image of what is on the physical
plane, does not come first at all in the consciousness of
spiritual beings above human beings. With them the intention
comes first, and how it is to be carried out is quite another
matter. Now in this respect humans are of course midway
between animals and angels. Therefore, they tend on the one
hand to descend to the unconsciousness of animals. Whenever a
criminal deed occurs, it is essentially due to the
animality in human beings. On the other hand, however, we also
have a tendency to ascend to the consciousness of the
Angeloi. We have within us the possibility of developing a
higher consciousness, a consciousness beyond the ordinary
one, in which intentions take on a different aspect than is
normally the case.

Thus we can say, that if as human beings we get involved in
some of life's important problems, we cannot then make
plans in the ordinary way. Suppose that as a teacher — a
proper teacher this time — you have a particular child to
educate. Now an average person has his educational principles.
He knows when to give punishment and when not to; perhaps
that he should never give any punishment at all. He knows how
to do that. But if you look at the matter from the point of
view of a higher consciousness, you will not always judge in
this way, but will leave everything in life's hands. You will
wait for the results of observation. Your one intention will be
to bring out all the latent talents. But these potential
talents can be drawn out in various ways. This is the important
thing.

If
we take all these things into consideration, we will realize
that in order to understand how necessity and freedom affect
the human being we must observe both the external physical part
and the inner part, first of all the etheric. I have already
drawn your attention to the fact that our etheric body takes
quite a different course from the physical body. Our physical
body, as I once told you, is young to begin with. It then
develops and grows older until it becomes senile. The etheric
body does the opposite. Whereas we say we grow older when
speaking of the physical body, we ought really to say we grow
younger as regards the etheric body. If we want to use the
words “old” and “young” for the
etheric body, it is actually old when we are born, for it
is all wrinkled up and small enough to fit us. When we reach a
normal old age, and die, our etheric body has become so
rejuvenated that we can hand it over to the whole world, where
it can work again as a youthful force. While the physical grows
older, the etheric body grows younger. It gets younger and
younger.

If
we die at an unusual time, die young, significant things can
happen with the etheric body, such as those I have told you
about. But it is not only with regard to aging that we see a
difference between the physical and etheric bodies, but also
with regard to necessity and freedom. When the human being is
most enmeshed in necessity in what he does with the physical
body or in general as a being on the physical plane, he is then
freest in his etheric body, and the latter is then left
entirely to itself. Whenever the etheric body is enmeshed
in necessity, everything a person does on the physical plane is
left to his own freedom. Thus, where the physical body is
subject to necessity, the etheric body has a corresponding
degree of freedom, and where the etheric body is subject to
necessity, the physical body has a certain amount of
freedom.

Let
us look at what this means. You cannot say we are completely
free to get up and go to bed whenever we want to. People get up
in the morning and go to bed in the evening. There is no
question of freedom there. This is part of the iron necessities
of life. And even if you vary the time of getting up and going
to bed, freedom is obviously out of the question. You
also eat every day. There is no question of freedom there. You
cannot resolve to do away with this necessity and try to be
free by not eating, because you feel the taking in of food to
be a compulsion. With regard to all these things a human
being is tied to necessity. And why is he tied to necessity?
Because the companion — as I called him last time —
the inner self accompanying us through life on the physical
plane and through all the compulsions connected with the
physical plane, lives all the while in freedom.

But
if we are to involve our inner being, our etheric body, in
necessity, how are we to do it? By consciously submitting to
what we recognize to be a necessity. For instance, by telling
ourselves that the time has come when everyone who realizes he
is ready for spiritual science ought to take it up. Nobody is
forced to do this by an external necessity, of course. But we
can see it as an inner necessity, because it is necessary in
the present cycle of humanity. Thus out of our own free will we
yield to necessity. There is no external pressure on the
physical plane. We must follow compulsion out of inner freedom,
as it were. The etheric body itself makes the resolve, which
permeates it with necessity; it creates the necessity itself,
thus acquiring the possibility of developing in freedom
with regard to what happens on the physical plane. That is to
say, we become acquainted with spiritual necessity, thereby
making ourselves more and more free with regard to life on the
physical plane.

You
will now say, “Through the very fact that we find our way
into a spiritual necessity we ought to become more and more
free in life on the physical plane.” That is indeed so.
By uniting ourselves with the spirit that streams through the
world and letting it pass through us, we really do receive
elements that set us free from the fetters of the physical
world. We cannot of course free ourselves from what is allotted
us by our previous incarnation, by our karma. But if we do not
thus free ourselves through our knowledge of spiritual
necessity from conditions of necessity on the physical plane,
we remain bound to these after death, and have to carry them
with us. We have to carry the necessities of the physical plane
with us through the life between death and a new birth, and
cannot free ourselves from them. But each moment in which we
connect ourselves in our etheric body with the necessities of
the spiritual plane, we become freer and freer of the
necessities of the physical plane.

It
is indeed so that if we can follow out of a free resolve a
purely spiritual impulse, we become freer and freer from all
that would otherwise fetter us to physical life, fetter us far
beyond death. On the other hand, with regard to everything we
are enmeshed in during physical life, and which is
unalterable, the etheric body as such becomes freer and
freer.

Thus we see how freedom and necessity interact on the physical
plane and also in connection with the etheric body. The
etheric body receives its freedom through the necessity of the
physical plane, and has to recognize its own necessity. The
physical body receives its freedom when the etheric body thus
recognizes its necessity, and its necessity arises through its
self-chosen karmic involvement in the events on the physical
plane.

In
this way we see the physical part of human beings, free in
bondage, and the spiritual-soul part, bound in freedom,
interacting organically. Freedom and necessity always
interweave. It is quite impossible for us to be subject to pure
necessity when we are fully conscious. Through the fact
that we permeate a thing with consciousness, that is to say,
accept it in full consciousness, freedom governs our
soul. This is how we lift ourselves out of necessity in our
soul and make ourselves free concerning matters we are
conscious of. However, if we acknowledge with our minds that
something is necessary, for instance, that the present
time is the time for taking part in spiritual science, if we
freely comply with a necessity, so to speak, does this give us
a degree of unconsciousness? In a certain sense it does. We do
become unconscious to the extent that we undertake to
develop our consciousness to the point where we reach the gate
through which streams and radiates what is to come from the
spiritual world. We then receive this, and bend to the
powerful forces coming to meet us from the spirit world. This
is why in connection with working our way into spiritual
necessity we speak of working our way up to the beings who bend
down toward us.

Therefore we shall always stress that with our
consciousness we soar toward the beings who permeate and
pulse through us from the spiritual world and when we say,
“We must of necessity accommodate ourselves to the
impulses coming from the spiritual world,” we expect that
at the same time the impulses of higher spiritual beings will
descend into these our impulses. Thus a relative, deep
unconsciousness arises, where we become aware of what is at
work in us spiritually in the same way as we would be aware of
an unconscious action where we are quite sure that the spirit
is in us and the right thing to do is to obey, where we are
privileged to obey.

We
have now come back to our starting point. If we tried with our
ordinary consciousness to mull over the many consequences that
can arise from such significant events as those of the present,
for instance — and I compared them earlier to the
Roman-Teutonic wars — we would get nowhere. However, the
moment we can tell ourselves we do not want to find the right
solution through mulling them over but through giving way to
the spiritual impulse and letting it stream in, we do not need
to brood. For then we know that if only we let these spiritual
impulses take hold of us, they lead us to the right solution,
to spiritual currents that even go beyond the centuries,
beyond millennia. This is what is important.

Then we see that we no longer need to think that things must go
like this today and like that tomorrow for such and such to
happen, for we will realize that we are now living in the
particular epoch of humanity in which the further evolution of
earthly existence can progress in the right way only if
spiritual impulses coming from the spiritual world are
directly taken up. That is how it is. And the things that
happen externally on the physical plane must of necessity unite
with these impulses in the right way. Then the right things
will happen. Then we shall know, without mulling over what will
happen tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, that what
will really come about will be that the souls now passing
through the gate of death will continue to work on, both
in their etheric bodies and as souls, to the extent that the
thoughts of those human beings who will in the future populate
the blood-stained battlefields of the earth join with them, so
that something will arise that will live for centuries.
But we must have a direct awareness of this in the spirit of
these words we have often heard:

Out of the courage of the fighters,
Out of the blood of battles,
Out of the grief of the bereaved,
Out of the peoples' deeds of sacrifice
There shall arise spirit fruit
If only souls, in spirit-mindfulness,
Will reach out to the spirits' realm.

The
important thing to realize is that from a certain point in the
present our souls must become conscious of the spirit, souls
that have the will to direct their consciousness toward
the spirit. Then, from what is happening today, the right
things will come for the future. To make this thought our own,
steadfast confidence is needed, such as those beings have whom
we count as members of the hierarchy of the angels. For angels
act out of that kind of confidence. They know that if they have
the right intentions, the right things will come of them; not
because they envision that future events should take a definite
form, but because they have the right intentions. These right
intentions, however, can only be grasped spiritually. And only
through thinking in the way of spiritual science can we find
the way to grasp something spiritually, as we have endeavored
to do.